For the last several years, the largest tournament in the world has been the

World Series of Poker The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is a series of poker tournaments held annually in Paradise, Nevada and, since 2004, sponsored by Caesars Entertainment. It dates its origins to 1970, when Benny Binion invited seven of the best-known poker pla ...

Main Event. With the exception of 1992, the

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

10,000

buy-in Buying in may refer to: *Buying in (poker), a tournament entrance fee *Buying in (securities), a process in which a buyer whose seller fails to deliver the securities contracted for, can "buy in" the securities from a third party *Management buy-i ...

tournament increased in prize pool year-over-year from its start in 1970 until 2007 (the latter a result of the

Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) is United States legislation regulating online gambling. It was added as Title VIII to the SAFE Port Act (found at ) which otherwise regulated port security. The UIGEA prohibits gam ...

, which reduced the number of players winning their seats via online play). The first tournament to reach a million dollar prize pool was the 1983 WSOP Main Event. The WSOP Main Event of 2004 had the first prize pool of above $10,000,000. The largest non Hold'em Tournament has been the 2008 WSOP $50K HORSE with a prize pool of $7,104,000 and the first prize of $1,989,120 going to

Scotty Nguyen Thuận B. "Scotty" Nguyễn (born October 28, 1962) is a Vietnamese-American professional poker player who is a five-time World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet winner, most notably as the winner of the 1998 World Series of Poker Main Event and ...

. Below are the 30 largest

poker tournament A poker tournament is a tournament where players compete by playing poker. It can feature as few as two players playing on a single table (called a "heads up poker, heads-up" tournament), and as many as tens of thousands of players playing on th ...

s with respect to the prize pool in

United States dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...

s and not number of entrants. This list includes live and

online poker Online poker is the game of poker played over the Internet. It has been partly responsible for a huge increase in the number of poker players worldwide. Christiansen Capital Advisors stated online poker revenues grew from $82.7 million in 2001 t ...

. Currently, 14 of the 15 largest prize pools in history have been WSOP Main Events. The second largest prize pool outside of the Main Event is the 2012 WSOP event known as

The Big One for One Drop The Big One for One Drop is a $1,000,000 buy-in No Limit Texas hold 'em tournament hosted at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Added in 2012, it became the highest buy-in poker tournament in history as well as the largest single payout offered. T ...

, held from July 1–3. It featured a buy-in of US$1 million, the largest in poker history. Of the buy-in, $111,111 was a charitable donation to the

One Drop Foundation One Drop is an international non-profit organization based in Montreal, created in 2007 by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté, which is focused on water initiatives. Arts and culture One Drop uses circus arts, folklore, popular theatre, musi ...

, and the WSOP took no rake. All 48 seats available for that event were filled, resulting in a prize pool of $42,666,672, with over 5 million dollars donated. The second largest pool for any event outside of the WSOP was the 2012 Macau High Stakes Challenge, with a

HK$ The Hong Kong dollar (, sign: HK$; code: HKD) is the official currency of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It is subdivided into 100 cents or 1000 mils. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority is the monetary authority of Hong Kong and ...

2 million (US$260,000) buy-in plus a rebuy option. The event drew a field of 73, of which 21 made a rebuy, resulting in a prize pool of HK$182,360,000 (slightly over US$23.5 million). All of the 30 richest tournaments to date were played in No Limit Hold'em.

Notes

{{Major poker tournaments Poker tournaments Entertainment-related lists of superlatives